Wednesday, December 30, 2015

F4H-1 #6 (BuNo 143391) during the carrier suitability trials prelims at the Naval Air Test Center (NATC) at Pax River in 1961. I believe that this is a complete sequence of photos. I have also included a color sideview of the aircraft at NATC and a color photo of it on the USS Independence (W/O nose boom).

Monday, December 28, 2015

Photos of the McDonnell XP-88 Spin Model in the Langley Tail Spin 20-foot Tunnel in July of 1952. Both swept and straight wings were tested. “The McDonnell XP-88 was a prototype originating in 1946. It was designed as a long-range fighter to escort bombers. Changes in military priorities in 1950 led to cancellation of the project.” Credit: NASA. Thanks to PaulMM (Overspin) for the tip!

Saturday, December 26, 2015

A very interesting photo showing four different MDC fighters under the Tee Pees! F-4 and F-15 chase planes, the F-18 and AV-8B prototypes all together next to Bldg. 42 in November 1978. An unusual sight!

Friday, December 25, 2015

Three NACA XP-88 Wind Tunnel research memorandums involving a 1/50th scale model and two 1/24th scale models. One test with the vee tail configuration as shown in the above photos! Credit: The Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Along with the engineering orientation manual, we were given this little booklet on how to design aircraft. A reminder of simplier times, yes; but, the ideas still hold true. Credit: Dick Synder via The Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

A copy of the July 1963 McAir Engineering Orientation Manual. And yes, I was issued a copy of this manual in June 1962. Memories!

Interesting, as the first half has the company info on each of the past products. The last half has the corporate philosophy, for the time, and explains the compensation “Totem Pole” and the general living in St. Louis, MO. Credit: John Holliday via The Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Known as the Experimental Cargo/Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS), this program sparked a great competition between Douglas, Boeing and Lockheed and had several iterations; but Lockheed was awarded the contract on October 2nd, 1965 and the result was the C-5 Galaxy. (The artwork above was from the great RG Smith.) Credit: The Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum

Boeing and Douglas use the knowledge acquired from their CX-HLS-work on studies for large commercial aircraft projects. This is the actual beginning of the widebody airliner era.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Copies of the Signal Corp Specifications No. 486, for a heavier-than-air flying machine and the Wright Brothers contract to build such a machine. If you have never seen these documents, take a minute and look them over as they are the basis for all US miltary aircraft!

Monday, December 7, 2015

I just found out that by using something called “Trafficshare” on FileFactory; you, the readers, can download my PDF’s directly without the annoying download pages, delays, daily limits and pitches!

This has been implemented and everyone (Up to 100GB/Mo allowance on my account) can now directly download all the PDF’s, just like a premium account, by just clicking the PDF download link. My apologies that I didn’t find it sooner!

Please let me know by way of the comment link below, if this is working for you.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

While at Edwards AFB as a Flight Test Engineer in 1973 and 1974, I met Richard Younge, a fellow aviation historian. We became good friends and would go into the desert to find crash sites such as the YB-49. We also became friends with the base historian, Ted Bear, which lead Rich to write this short; but, nice article for the base paper, Desert Wings. It gives a history of the flying wing test program and the base name change.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

A very good short article on the McDonnell F-101B Voodoo aircraft from the International Plastic Modelers Society (IPMS) Quarterly publication, Vol. 17, No. 1. This Fall 1981 article was written by Lee Bracken with photos by Duane Kuhn and has the units that flew the Voodoo and a number of illustrations with markings.

Friday, November 20, 2015

A nice article from Phantom Flyer on the early gray colored Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft with lots of facts and figures!Also, I have included an Inboard Profile and two of Mike Badrocke's wonderful cutaway drawings of the A-10.

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About Me

My name is Ron Downey. I am a retired Aeronautical Engineer who worked for McDonnell Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas Corp for 40 years and collected many photos, info and brochures of their products. While the F-4 is my favorite, I have many other MDC items and these will be scanned and presented here. In addition, I have been an aviation historian for most of my adult life and I have amassed a large amount of info over my 50+ years of collecting and will be bringing that here also. My aim is to bring aviation material (Photos, articles; etc) to this blog before it is lost; but, not in-depth explanations as any good search engine can be used for that purpose. I may be contacted at: aviationarchives(at)gmail.com

Copyright and Photo Credits

As all of this info was originally for my use only in order to build plastic scale models, I never paid too much attention to copyrights or proper photo credits. Therefore, if something is not credited correctly, please let me know and I will be happy to delete or properly credit the material. (I have in my possession all the items and original material and these are all new scans, except where noted.) All photos and info are credited to McDonnell Douglas unless otherwise noted. Feel free to use any of this info with the credit of Ron Downey via Aviation Archives. I can be reached at: aviationarchives(at)gmail.com.